#9: Galaxian (1979, Namco)

So really, who can remember the difference between Galaxian and Galaga without stopping to think about it? Not me. Galaxian, the game we're looking at today, is basically a clone of Space Invaders with nicer graphics and more impressive enemy patterns. More impressive because the enemies actually do something other than move down at you and bob from side to side, that is.

Frankly, in today's world, there's very little reason to play Galaxian instead of the far superior Galaga. But in the magical self-contained world of One Thousand Plus One we're still stuck in 1979. Jimmy Carter is President, Three Mile Island was just decimated by a nuclear meltdown and kids everywhere have begun the long road to obesity as McDonald's introduces the Happy Meal. We don't have Galaga yet. What we have is Space Invaders, essentially a monochrome game that's been out long enough that people are used to it.

So when Galaxian comes out with its pretty colors and enemies that fly at you in unpredictable patterns we're impressed. What's more, it's got animations! Beautiful, beautiful animations. And background music! We haven't seen something like this before. It's new. It's unique. It's now. Keep that in mind as we battle the alien menace.

The version of Galaxian I played was emulated in MAME. If for whatever reason you want to play it yourself, it's readily available with a quick google search.

So before we even start the game I've managed to learn something: did you know the ship in this game was called the Galaxip? I sure didn't. Also seven thousand points for a bonus ship is actually quite a lot. You'd be surprised.

So this is Galaxian. It's similar to Space Invaders on first glance. That's our ship at the bottom. Up top is a wave of aliens. Unlike Space Invaders these aliens will actually break formation and swoop down to attack, firing blasts along the way. Naturally one hit means death, be that from an enemy shot or physically colliding with an alien. To defend ourselves we can fire a whopping one shot at a time - much like Space Invaders, this means that if we miss we're defenseless for significantly longer than if our shots hit home. Accuracy counts.

The yellow flagships at the top of the formation behave a little differently. They take a couple of red "royal guard" ships with them on the way down - the other ships make solo assaults. We get a nice chunk of bonus points for taking out a flagship. This bonus increases if we manage to shoot it as it's closer to the bottom of the screen (and therefore more likely to kill us).

The most dangerous part of each wave is toward the end - the remaining enemies will launch an endless series of divebombing attacks. Once we finish them off, we gain a little flag in the lower right corner of the screen and move on to the next wave.

As we progress through the waves the enemies become more and more aggressive. This is a very, very common screen in Galaxian. You're going to die.

Galaxian isn't all that impressive by today's standards. However, it definitely paved the way for future games. You'll see a lot of the features it introduced in Galaga, naturally, but it influenced plenty of other shooters in the 1980s as well.